The Invisible Assassin (9 page)

‘Hello, Aunt Midge.’ Parsons smiled. ‘I phoned Joe and said I’d be over.’

Aunt Midge looked at Jake and Lauren standing beside him, and her face became worried again. She cast a nervous look inside the flat, and then asked in an urgent whisper, ‘This isn’t one of those interventions, is it? Because really Joe is . . .’

‘No, no,’ Parsons assured her with a laugh. ‘It really is just a call. We’ve got something to ask Joe.’

‘OK,’ said the woman, and she opened the door wider to let them in. As Jake and Lauren followed Parsons along the corridor, she called after them plaintively, ‘But if you can get Joe to do something else other than be stuck at that computer . . .’

‘I’ll try, Aunt Midge,’ called back Parsons.

Oh God, thought Jake, I was right. We’re about to enter the stinking bedroom of some overweight greasy teen computer nerd. It’ll be strewn with empty pizza boxes and burger wrappers, and posters of Darth Vader on the walls, and the stench of rotting food and teenage-boy hormones will peel the linings off my nostrils.

He let Lauren follow Parsons first into the room. As he expected, it was dark. The curtains were closed. And there was a figure hunched over a keyboard at a small table near the bed, barely illuminated by the glow from the screen.

‘Hi, Joe,’ Parsons said cheerfully.

As Jake’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that the boy was actually wearing a hood concealing his head.

Grief, groaned Jake inwardly: wearing a hoodie indoors. This cousin of Parsons is in a worse state than I thought.

Strangely, though, there were no empty pizza boxes or food wrappers. Not even a crisp packet. In fact, the room was surprisingly neat.

The boy turned round and surveyed the visitors from beneath his hood.

‘Three of you?’ he said. ‘What is this? Some kind of convention?’

The boy’s voice was surprisingly light for a teenager. He’s obviously a lot younger than I thought, mused Jake.

‘No, we want your help,’ said Parsons. ‘We need you to do a search for us.’

The boy studied them. Now Jake could see that he had a really thin face beneath his hoodie, and no weight at all on his body. OK, so not the stereotypical overweight computer nerd.

‘Why can’t you do it?’ asked Joe.

‘Because we need a machine that isn’t being spied on,’ said Parsons. He gestured at Jake and Lauren. ‘They’re under surveillance, which makes me think I could be, too.’

Jake saw the boy’s eyes light up in his pale face at this and he pulled back his hood to get a better look at them. As he did so, Jake realised with a shock that he wasn’t a boy. He was a girl of about fourteen or fifteen. So, not ‘Joe’ but ‘Jo’!

‘Under surveillance from who?’ asked Jo, obviously intrigued.

‘The government,’ said Jake.

‘Cool.’ Jo smiled. ‘Why?’

‘Can we ask the questions later?’ asked Parsons. ‘While you’re doing the searches.’

‘Sure.’ Jo nodded. ‘What are we looking for.’

‘A place called Hadley Park Research Establishment,’ Jake told her. ‘It’s in a village called Stone, near Aylesbury.’

Jo’s nimble fingers began to flit over the keyboard of her laptop. As she typed, she asked, ‘What’s it do?’

‘We’re not sure,’ said Parsons. ‘That’s what we’re hoping you’ll find out for us.’

On the screen appeared a list of links, with brief comments beneath.

‘It’s some kind of secret science place,’ murmured Jo. ‘Does that sound right?’

‘Yes,’ said Lauren.

Jo continued scrolling down the screen.

‘Hey, aliens!’ she said, pleased. ‘Really cool!’

‘Aliens?’ repeated Jake, puzzled.

‘Yeah. That’s just one of the things they reckon is going on here. There’s the usual stuff. The Animal Rights people accuse it of experimenting on animals. One of those Liberty-type outfits reckons it’s keeping prisoners there to experiment on. But this one looks the coolest!’

‘Aren’t you worried about the government spying on you through your computer?’ asked Jake.

Jo laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my own firewalls set up. No one can break through them.’ She chuckled. ‘And believe me, people have tried!’

She connected to a link, and up came a site declaring itself ‘AlienWatch’. It was a series of postings. Jo scrolled down until she came to the one she was looking for.

‘There!’ she said, and moved her chair back so they could all read the words on the posting.

‘Stardate 5 March. Action at Hadley Park. Today, armed soldiers and people in hazard suits rushed into HPRE, protecting two ambulances. There’d been reports of big discs in the sky. Coincidence? More likely Roswell, UK. Do we get to see the alien autopsies from the crash site this time, or will this be yet another cover-up!’

‘Roswell?’ asked Jake, puzzled.

Jo turned to him and curled her lip in a sneer. She turned to Parsons. ‘He doesn’t know about Roswell?’ she said, her tone very disapproving.

‘Roswell, New Mexico,’ said Lauren. ‘Site of a UFO crash in 1947. The bodies were taken for autopsy and the whole thing was kept secret. Still
is
a secret, officially.’

Jo looked at Lauren admiringly.

‘Hey, you’re cool!’ she said.

Lauren smiled at her. ‘I can’t do cool things like you’re doing,’ she complimented Jo back.

Suddenly a realisation hit Jake.

‘March the fifth!’ he burst out. ‘That’s it!’

The others looked at him, surprised.

‘What is?’

‘The day of the dig,’ he said. ‘The day they dug that thing up and the man turned into that . . . thing.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘
That’s
what they took into Hadley Park. The book and the man. Or, at least, his remains.’

‘His remains?’ echoed Jo, a note of shock in her voice.

The other three exchanged looks, then Jake said, ‘We have to tell her.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Parsons doubtfully. ‘We don’t want to drag her into this.’

‘You already have,’ Jo pointed out.

‘Yes, but only so far,’ said Parsons carefully. ‘It’s not right to put you into a . . . ‘ He hesitated, then said carefully, ‘A difficult position.’

‘What do you mean, difficult?’ demanded Jo.

‘Well . . .’ began Parsons.

‘He means dangerous,’ cut in Lauren. ‘They’ve already broken into my place and stolen my laptop and the evidence I had.’

‘And they tried to kill me,’ said Jake. ‘They tried to push me under a train.’

Jo now looked at Jake with awe in her eyes.

‘Cool!’

Parsons shook his head.

‘No, it’s not cool,’ he said firmly. ‘I was wrong to come here with this. And especially wrong to bring these two.’

‘Well, you’ve already done it.’ Jo shrugged. ‘So you might as well tell me the rest.’

‘No,’ repeated Parsons, his tone even firmer. ‘We can leave now, and even if anybody has been watching, we won’t have been here long enough for them to get suspicious.’

‘Maybe Jo can suggest someone else,’ said Jake. ‘Someone who won’t mind being at risk. Maybe someone older?’

He’d said the wrong thing.

‘I’m sixteen, rivet-head!’ snapped Jo. ‘I can do loads of things legally. And you can talk – you don’t even look like you’re old enough to shave!’

‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ said Lauren. She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Jo, but I think Jake and Carl are right. This could be dangerous. It’s all right for us . . .’

‘Why?’ demanded Jo angrily.

‘Because we’re older,’ said Lauren.

Jo glared at her.

‘Queen Victoria took over the throne when she was just eighteen. And she became ruler of over half the world,’ she snapped. ‘And then there was that boy of sixteen who sailed round the world single-handed. So don’t talk to me about being too young for this.’

Jake nodded. ‘She’s got a point,’ he said.

Jo added, ‘And there’s something at this Hadley place you want, right?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Jake. ‘At least, we think there is.’

‘Well, you’re going to need me if you want to get inside the place.’

Jake looked at Jo, really taken aback. Was this girl some kind of burglar?

Jo had turned back to her keyboard and her fingers moved at speed over it. And then, on the screen, appeared an architect’s drawing: a building plan.

‘There!’ said Jo triumphantly. ‘The floor plan of Hadley Park.’

Jake’s mouth dropped open. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.

‘Easy.’ Jo shrugged. ‘Every building in the country has to register their plans with their local authority. Once you know the address of the place you’re looking for, and what local council it comes under, the rest is easy.’ She gave a mischievous grin. ‘You want the plans for Buckingham Palace?’ she asked.

Jake looked at Parsons, stunned.

‘Your cousin is a security risk!’ he said.

‘Easy!’ smirked Jo. She flicked the keys, and the architect’s plan on the screen was replaced by another, and another, and another.

‘We need to find out where they’ll have likely stashed this thing,’ she muttered. ‘It’s dangerous, right? That’s why the hazard suits.’

‘Yes,’ said Jake.

Jo flicked a key, and the architect’s plans vanished and the list of links about Hadley Park came up again.

‘Let’s see what the chatter says,’ she muttered. Rapidly, she scrolled down, then went to another page, and another, then another.

‘It looks like Block C is where all the security stuff happens,’ she announced. ‘According to the whispers and gossip on these blogs and posts, there are weird goings-on in Block C. So I’ll put my money on whatever you’re looking for being stashed there.’

She hit a key, and the architect’s plans for Hadley Park Research Establishment came upon again. She scrolled across the drawings on the screen, and then stopped, and they saw the diagram of a small block sub-divided into rooms.

‘Block C.’ Jo smiled. ‘That’s where it is.’

‘Hmm,’ said Jake doubtfully. ‘It’s all very well knowing that’s where the book is, but how do we get in?’

‘A
book
?!’ Jo’s voice rose in disbelief. ‘This is about a
book
!’

‘Not just any book,’ said Lauren. ‘This is a book the government doesn’t want anyone to know about.’

‘Government secrets?’ asked Jo.

‘In a way,’ said Parsons, shooting a guarded look at both Lauren and Jake. We don’t need to tell her about the Order of Malichea, he seemed to be saying. Let’s keep this simple.

Jake nodded.

‘Like I was saying, there’s going to be all sorts of security,’ he said. ‘Armed guards. Dogs.’

‘Electronic keypads on the doors.’ Parsons nodded.

‘They won’t be a problem,’ said Jo. ‘I’ll disable them.’

‘How?’ asked Jake.

‘I hack into their security system and override the locks on Block C, of course,’ said Jo. ‘Though it’s best to do it only for a short while. If I unlock all the doors too soon, there’s a chance it’ll be spotted. You know, someone walking around checking.’

‘So we’d need to fix an agreed time,’ said Lauren.

‘Right.’ Jo nodded. ‘If you’re standing ready by the door at, say, eleven thirty, I’ll make sure the locks are off.’ She flicked more keys and a series of schematic diagrams appeared on the screen, which she studied. ‘Though you won’t want the locks switched off for too long. There’s bound to be a fail-safe cut-in that sets an alarm off if they’re turned off for a certain length of time. There usually is with this sort of security system.’

Jake looked at Jo as she worked, stunned. This girl was just sixteen years old, and yet she could hack into a top-security government research lab and open all the locks on the doors just by pressing a few computer keys! It was incredible!

Then an awful thought hit him.

‘Hang on,’ he said, concerned. ‘How do we get into the place? And how do we get to this Block C? Like I said before, there are bound to be all sorts of security systems you can’t deal with just by hitting a computer. Guards. Dogs. Electrified fences.’

‘I might be able to cut off the electricity to the fence,’ said Jo, ‘but there could be a back-up system. The only way to really do it would be to shut down the electricity supply to the whole place.’

‘Which would alert the guards and raise the alarm,’ pointed out Parsons.

Jo had put the plan of the research base back on the screen; this one showed the plan of the whole base, including the fences that surrounded it.

‘The fence is electrified, OK.’ She nodded. Then she smiled. ‘But there’s one thing they forgot.’ She highlighted an area near the fence and pressed a key. ‘There,’ she said.

‘What are we looking at?’ asked Jake, puzzled.

‘Drains,’ said Parsons. ‘Storm drains.’

Jo nodded. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘A place like this can’t afford to be flooded. There’s a storm drain runs right across the base, and it comes out into a culvert just outside the fence . . . here.’